


Ladders, and Trying Not to Fall Down Them: A Mia Shepard Alphabet Fic

by Zendelai



Series: Mia Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Adept Shepard, Alphabet Meme, Biotics, Colonist Shepard, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-02 21:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4074931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zendelai/pseuds/Zendelai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tale of Mia Shepard (Colonist, War Hero, Adept, Thane lover) throughout the alphabet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Atmosphere

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on Tumblr, from piratejazzy.

She didn’t know why she was here, this place of promises both broken and forgotten; or perhaps she did know, that she had her own promises to both break and forget. 

After all of the shit that had happened over the past six months, she believed the desire for forget it all was justified. For one does not watch one’s family get slaughtered without the need to pretend it never happened, even if just for an evening. 

So she sighed, her hands clenching into fists causing her long nails to dig into her palms, enough to sting but not enough to draw blood (enough blood had been shed for her lifetime, thank you very much), and began to march towards the bouncer. 

Bloody hell she had to stop being so maudlin. That was why she was here, after all. 

As the burly bouncer neared, she pulled up the tiny swath of elastic fabric that passed as a dress to show just a bit more of her legs. He seemed unperturbed as she approached, his arms crossed round a broad chest, causing his t-shirt sleeves to come even closer to bursting under the force of his unnaturally large biceps. “ID” was the only word he grumbled, the corners of his lips turning down into an irritated frown. 

From within her bra she slipped out her older sister’s ( _deceased_ older sister, she reminded herself with a cringe) ID card. Holding it between her fore and middle fingers, she held it out to him, keeping her smile sly and her back straight. 

His brow furrowed, he surveyed it the way that a paleontologist surveys a particularly interesting fossil before he thrust it back towards her so she could slid it back into the safety net of her brazier. He managed to pull together two more words – “you’re good” – before opening the door to the club to permit her entry. 

The atmosphere of the place was assaulting each of her senses in turn: it smelled of men and women who passed on this week’s shower combined with the over sweetness of coolers and rum, the pounding music was so loud in her ears she was certain she would be deaf the next morning, the flashes of laser lighting in the otherwise pitch black was positively seizure-inducing, and the overwhelming heat and stuffiness brought moisture to the fore of her skin. She chose to conquer the bar first, hoping that a drink (or two, perhaps three, even four) would unlock some of the courage that brought her here in the first place.

She leaned on the metal bar, pushing her long, copper hair forward, and shouted to the bartender over the shockingly loud music, “Screwdriver, please!” The bartender – a woman barely older than she – nodded, quickly poured the drink, and held up ten fingers. 

Ten fucking credits? For one drink? No wonder people go broke at these places. She rolled her eyes but pulled up her banking program on her omni-tool to start a tab with the bartender, including a handsome tip for good measure. 

Finishing this drink and grabbing a second, she began to make her way to the dance floor, her hips shaking of their own accord vaguely to the beat. Once on the floor, the effect of the drink and the atmosphere became intoxicating: the feel of endless rows of bodies moving in close proximity, the beat moving from her skin through her muscles and to her core, the way that men and women alike eyed her with appreciative expressions. Holding her drink high she began to move, undaunted by the fact that she was alone, although her solitude was quickly broken by a set of broad hands grasping her hips from behind, pulling her close. 

“Hey, gorgeous,” a gruff voice whispered in her ear. He was hard; she could feel it through the thin fabric of his pants and the even more thin fabric of her dress. “Want to take some Red Sand and fuck in the bathroom?" 

"Nothing on Earth could sound less appealing to me at the moment,” she retorted before dancing herself as far away from him as possible. Before she could properly distance herself, however, one of those hands grasped her arm firmly, pulling her in close, and a flood of panic rose in her chest. She felt his beard burn her cheek when he hissed in her ear, “That wasn’t a request, sweet cheeks." 

Instantly, her teeth bared and anger rose to push away the panic. Her hands moved, almost out of her control, to aim at his chest; he was even uglier than she thought, easily in his mid-forties with his obvious Sand addiction pulling any hope of being handsome out of his sallow skin. Power flooded from her brain through her chest and down her arms, channeling through her hands and flaring out in a throw that sent him across the room. 

More like a stuffed animal than a rag doll he landed on the floor with a sickening thud, motionless. The sudden silence as the music turned off with a sad whir was positively deafening, yet she could still hear the whispered comments of shock that passed around the room. 

"What did she  _do_ to that poor man?" 

"They let one of  _those_ freaks in here?" 

"I thought that they were institutionalizing those  _biotics_." 

The crowd rushed towards the man; a frantic woman dialed for emergency; after too many bated breaths, the man stirred, and she knew that she had lingered too long and trotted for the exit. 

Once outside, the crisp night air flowed into her lungs so easily that she began to hyperventilate from the need for it. 

Perhaps staying out of the general public on Earth was best for Mia Shepard.


	2. B is for Bibliophile

She was in the jungle.

It was a place she had only ever seen in vids, but she was absolutely certain that was where she was. It was a place with layer upon layer of bright green, so vivid the sky appeared white in contrast. Occasional flowers and bark accented the green-centric mosaic, and out of the corner of her eye, she watched some sort of monkey gracefully leap from one branch, extending its arms out to grasp the next branch in its path. 

There was a group of people around her: a tourist group, perhaps? They were all wearing those typical Hawaiian t-shirts and beige caps you see on tourists, anyways. One of them was even wearing a fanny pack. The jungle was too hard a place for people so soft. 

They were walking, with her at the lead, which was a foolish decision really seeing as she had no idea where they were going. But lead she did, following the most heavily-trodden path along the jungle floor, keeping her eyes trained down to step around the droppings of monkeys and who knows what else. 

She heard a crack of branches before her, and when she looked up, it was into the mouth of a snake. 

It had to be a python, or a cobra, or whatever those ones are that grow to over twenty feet; but it had four pointed, glistening teeth (are they venomous? she wondered, for a fraction of a second) aimed at her, and it began to lunge --

By the time Mia woke and shot up in bed, she realized she was screaming. She swiftly covered her mouth, hoping she didn’t wake either of her siblings or parents with her outburst, and felt foolish that she had been so frightened by a dream.

Eyes adjusting to the blackness, she peered out her bedroom window; it was so dark outside she had no concept of time. She realized that she was thirsty so she quietly sat up in bed, listening intently for if she had woken any family members in her outburst, but the house was as quiet as it should be in the dark of night.

Bare feet slithered across the floor, her legs covered to her ankles by her nightdress, as she made her way into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water from the sink. After she drank she turned, and noticed with a hint of surprise that her father’s light was on in his office, streaming through his cracked open door. She wondered if he had fallen asleep at his desk again. He worked so hard sometimes. 

She crept along the laminate floor, her head cocked in curiosity, until she reached the door. With a tentative push it opened before her, and instead of sleeping her father was in his plush reading chair, his reading glasses perched on his nose, a thick novel opened on his lap. His office was more of a library than an office, really: novels thick and thin, colourful and dark, yet all old lined the walls on mismatched bookshelves. In the center of it all was his reading chair, illuminated by his favourite lamp. His desk to complete the farm’s paperwork was pushed into the corner, pushed purposely to the back of his mind but never forgotten.

Most libraries nowadays were able to fit on a datapad in the palm of your hand. Michael Shepard, however, preferred his relics of the past, collecting as many paper novels as he could. Mia shared his passion, preferring reading words on paper as opposed to on a screen. 

He pushed his glasses up onto his head and looked up from his book. His eyes were as green -- no, greener -- than Mia’s, though his hair was closer to strawberry blonde than her copper. His nose was long (Mia’s short nose came from her mother), and his lips were thin (her full mouth came from her mother, too). 

“Can’t sleep, pumpkin?” he asked Mia. He looked tired. She wondered why he was still awake when he looked so tired. 

“Had a dream about a snake. You can’t sleep either?”

He smiled, softly but sadly, the type of smile she saw more and more often when the harvests were bad, the type of smile he put on to show the family a brave face even when they were struggling. She preferred his open, carefree smiles, the ones reserved for when the weather is cooperating for the crops and the cows are producing more than their quota of milk. “Thinking too hard about the harvest,” he responded. He rested his book on the small table beside his chair, folded his glasses, and placed them atop the book. He patted his lap to call Mia over, and, relieved to have her father’s support from the bad dream, she dashed over and sat, not caring that she was nearly fourteen and still finding comfort in her father’s arms. 

He asked, “Want to tell me about the dream?”

“Just a snake jumped out at me and scared me.”

“I thought I heard you make a noise.” He had a soothing voice, one that seemed to come from his chest rather than his throat. It made Mia think drinking hot apple cider while being wrapped in a wool blanket on a cool fall evening. 

“I’m ok now,” she insisted. “What’s going on with the harvest?”

He sighed, a sigh of wanting to internalize his fears, yet the deep night and the concerned gaze of his daughter weakened his resolve. “It’s been at least five degrees lower every day than Mindoir’s average temperature for our area. That means that the frost is going to arrive sooner, by about two weeks or so if I had to guess. We’re going to have to harvest early, which means crops that are of lower quality with less quantity.” He sighed again, but this was one of frustration. “We’re going to have to ration this winter if I’m right.”

Mia wanted to cry out in frustration, but instead her lip steadied in resolution. She would not weaken in front of her father, just because they’d have to have a light winter. “We’ll make it,” she instead insisted. “We always do.”

He pressed his thin lips to her hair, inhaling deeply as he did. She nestled her head into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her whole body. 

Alone she felt fragile, but with her father or her mother or her brother or her sister she became strong. The Shepard family worked as a unit, not just individuals, support and honesty being the family’s adhesives.  

Whatever the harvest threw at them, they would survive. As a family.

And with that in mind, Mia slipped into sleep in her father’s lap, all thoughts of snakes forgotten, and Michael shortly followed her. 


	3. C is for Capricious

Hands unusually small clutched the book to her chest, turning the world of fantasy into a shield. Bright eyes were affixed to the ground behind thick glasses, avoiding the keen gaze of malicious peers. Feet clad in boots dirty from work in the field propelled her quickly forward -- not a run, that would be admitting her fears, just a brisk walk -- and as far away from her fellow students as possible.

She tried to hide the tears, but they’re traitorous, slipping out of ducts exhausted from frequent crying. Almost every day, lately, as those she’s trapped with in school hurl every insult they can think up at her.

_Carrot top._

_Four eyes._

_Nerd._

_Geek._

_Loser._

The names she could cope with. Having siblings meant that she had names thrown at her like daggers constantly. It had become so frequent that she realized that names were more of a defense for those using them than a weapon against those they were aimed towards. 

It was when they hurled the truth towards her that she became truly hurt.

 

It was true that she had no friends, a fact that her peers reminded her of on an hourly basis. It was true that her family, being farmers, were far from wealthy, and her hand-me-down clothes laid baggy on a scrawny frame as a result. It was true that she was a good student, an achiever, who kept her head down in class and listened to the teachers and excelled as a result. 

It was true that she was ugly. Thick glasses and a wild mane of orange hair surrounding a face laden with freckles left her far from beautiful, after all. Or cute. Or anything other than ugly. 

She had almost reached her goal; she was steps away from the gate taking her out of the school, out of the reach of the other children, when Kate stepped in front of her.

“Going somewhere, Shepard?” The other girl sneered, arms crossed.

“Home.” Mia couldn’t seem to get her voice above a whisper. She didn’t meet Kate’s eyes, keeping her gaze fixed on the grass at her feet, clutching her book even closer.

“Must be tough, sleeping in cow dung and hay with the rest of your family.”

Heat rose in Mia’s cheeks. “We have a home. We have beds.”

“Are the rest of your family as ugly as you? Are they all ginger freaks like you? No wonder you live out in the country, nobody can stand to be near all of you.”

Mia felt like a pot about to boil over. High spots of scarlet dotted her cheeks, her heart was pounding, her chest was rapidly rising and falling, and her hands were clenched into fists. 

“Enough, Kate.”

“What, did I get too real?” The girl leaned in close. “Don’t like when I insult an ugly loser like you and your ugly loser family?”

Red clouded Mia’s vision. Never had she fought back against these taunts; her father always reminded her that they weren’t worth her time, trouble, and effort, and that if they sunk to the level of bullying, that they had many more problems than Mia knew of.

Then again, never before had they insulted her family.

Her voice rose, surprisingly steady, as she said, “I mean it, Kate. Stop.”

“What are you gonna do?” Kate taunted, knocking Mia’s book out of her hand.

Her body felt like an electrical current about to set her fingers alight. And when Mia shouted “Enough!” at the top of her lungs and held her hands out, the most entirely unexpected event transpired.

Electrical power in a blue wave emitted from her hands, throwing Kate against the fence and knocking the wind out of her with a gasp.

Mouth wide with shock, Mia gazed at her hands, trying to sort out what they hell they had just done. She hadn’t touched Kate -- not with her hands -- but the girl had flown away from her like she had been shoved by a strong power source, like...

It hit Mia with the strength of a train and she covered her mouth with her traitorous hand in shock.

_Biotics._

_Oh, no._

_Oh no oh no oh no oh --_

“You’re going to pay for that.” Kate had recovered, her breath coming in rapid gasps after being winded. Pushing herself off the fence, Kate sprinted towards the school, doubtless to tell one of the teachers what had just transpired.

Terrified off all the possibilities -- suspension, expulsion, jail -- Mia took off in the opposite direction, towards home, where she would be forced to explain to her parents that their child was a monster. 


	4. D is for Dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the prompt on tumblr by spinninglenny for Dance/Dancing

Her head was light with drink but her heart was heavy with grief, as it had ceaselessly been since that fateful day in Huerta Memorial. 

Oh, she could easily slip on the mask of Shepard: it was an art she had perfected over the years. It was the mask of one who had seen too much yet remained strong, who could aid any who asked, who could laugh when her crew needed to hear her laugh. With him had been the only time she had been able to comfortably put away the mask, but with him gone it was permanently embedding into her skin during her waking hours. But right now, she needed the mask for herself, to drive her to get out of bed each morning and get one step closer to saving the galaxy. Without the mask, she was sure that she would have given up long ago. 

The bed she had procured in Anderson’s suite looked comfortable, warm, and soft, fluffed pillows wrapped in high thread count cases. Her body was so weary she could have collapsed in it now, but she opted to shower first, to slough away the last remnants of the encounter with her clone that still stuck to her skin. She peeled away the casual clothes and congenial air; she let her wild mane of hair down until it formed a carrot-coloured halo around her; she washed away her so-familiar cosmetics, revealing the rawness beneath; she scrubbed her fair skin with heavily scented soap until it was red and angry. When she stepped out of the shower and into a long cotton top, she felt cleaner than she had in months, although her soul still felt dirty and abused. Thane was right: her soul and body were separate, and no matter what crimes she committed to one, the other would still remain as it was. 

She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles as she approached the bed, stumbling slightly from exhaustion and the buzz of alcohol that stretched from her mind to her limbs. 

As she stumbled, a strong hand caught her arm to steady her. It was as cold as if it had just emerged from an ice bath and she couldn’t help but gasp, retracting her arm so quickly she stumbled the other way. 

Her gaze met the owner of the arm’s, but the resulting cry of alarm was of joy and not fear. 

She wondered if she had to blame this vision on the alcohol, specifically that last shot of asari liqueur that had turned her vision temporarily blue. It could have been a hallucination brought on by grief, or even by madness from how overworked she was. All she knew was that at that moment, Thane was in her room, and he was a ghost.

“Siha.”

The sound of that oh-so-familiar voice, that had brought comfort to her during her darkest hours, was enough to make her knees crumble. She fell to them, clutching her face in her hands, tears streaking down her red cheeks. An ice cold hand clutched her elbow, pulling her upright and lifting her hands from her eyes. 

“What are you...” Her words were so strained they were nearly inaudible. Before she could begin to ask one of the dozen questions racing through her mind, he pressed a finger to her lips. His outline was blurred and he was translucent enough that she could see her bed through him, yet his gaze still pierced through her just as it had when he was alive. Beneath that gaze she crumbled, she melted, she turned from nothing into something again. 

Thane’s ghost had turned her from a shadow of the woman she was into Mia Shepard again.

“I...” The tears were falling more rapidly now, streaking from her cheeks onto her neck, blurring her vision. 

“Dance with me.” 

His finger slipped away from her lips as she whispered, “What?”

He sidestepped and pressed a button on her clock radio. String instruments from a song she didn’t recognize lifted into the air, resounding through the room, bathing it in their warmth. A piano followed and Thane held out one ghostly hand, which she grasped, and he pulled her tight into her. The rest of his form was as cold as his hand, she could feel it through her cotton sleepwear, but she didn’t mind, not at all. She fixed his gaze with hers, committing every detail of the moment to memory: the faintest smile that pulled up the corner of his lip, the way his brow stayed a little furrowed with worry, the unbridled love in his eyes. As always he moved with grace, each step wide, and she only had to follow his direction to overcome her lack thereof.  

The moment was fleeting, she knew; whether his spirit was truly here or it was a powerful figment of her imagination, she didn’t know. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter; she pressed herself tight to him, resting her head on his shoulder, the tears never ceasing to fall.

“I miss you every day,” she whispered into his neck. “I think of you with every waking moment. I wonder if you would be proud of what I’ve done.”

He squeezed her hand in hers. “I am, siha. I am.”

Her words were choked. “I love you so much.”

“I love you. Always.”

“Are you staying?”

“I cannot.”

She sighed in resignation, but she wasn’t surprised. The room fell into silence as the song finished, and he pressed freezing lips to her warm, wet ones. The kiss was momentary, and in a way she was grateful for it: it was a shadow of the warmth and love that their kisses had once possessed. 

Wordlessly Thane gestured towards the bed, and Shepard’s body and mind suddenly felt so much more tired than she had thought they were before. She pulled back the sheets and climbed in and Thane pulled them up to her chin, wrapping them tightly around her body.

“When you’re ready, siha, I am waiting for you --”

“-- Across the sea.”

“Do not hasten your trip for me. But know that, when you’re ready, I am there.”

Shepard swallowed down the lump that rose in her throat. “I know.”

He pressed a palm to her cheek, sighing quietly. “I love you.”

Sleep began to darken the edges of her vision, her eyelids becoming so heavy that she had to close them. “I love you too.”

\--

When she woke the next morning, she sat up swiftly with a gasp.

The memory of Thane lingered, but his ghost was gone. 


	5. E is for Empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good God, a chapter? What is this madness!

The warm silence in a cold evening atop the mountain pass was broken by the growl of a two-stroke engine flying through its gears. Affronted birds took flight and ravenous raccoons skittered off the streets, abandoning their already-deceased feast, just in time as a pair of tires rounded the corner, inches from their meal. 

 

The motorcyclist was barely visible in the din, clad in a black helmet, black boots, and matching black leathers. The only spot of colour was a bushel of vibrant auburn hair stuck out from the bottom of the helmet, flapping wildly in the wind.

 

If one were to listen closely to the rider, one would hear a colourful string of curses nearly as loud as the engine.

 

Just as quickly as the bike arrived it was gone, and the wildlife resumed their peaceful existence. 

 

For the rider, however, there was no such thing as a peaceful existence. 

 

She reached her destination -- a scenic overlook, emptied by the hour and the chill -- and skidded to a stop, popping out her kickstand before leaning back in her seat, tossing her helmet aside, and crying at the moon.

 

“Fucking fuck!”

 

She swung her head forward, burying her face in her hands, her screams changing from curses to inaudible mutterings of frustration.

 

_ You’ve done it now, Mia, _ she thought to herself.  _ You let your foster brother get to you. You punched him in the nose. Now, you can be homeless. Good show. Real smart.  _

 

The memory came back to her with perfect clarity -- her foster brother Gordon’s sneering face as he mocked her family for being dirty colonists, the braying laugh that escaped his throat as he said that they had deserved their fate. The rest became more muddled, but she recalled screaming, the sting in her knuckles as they connected with his nose, her foster brother’s wailing cries as he retreated beneath his mother’s skirts, the roar of her foster father’s motorcycle engine as she stole it from the garage.

 

Well, if nothing else was the nail in the coffin, stealing his precious bike most definitely was. 

 

She pulled off her gloves and tossed them to the ground, her right stinging sharply as she did so. She brought her knuckles to her eyes and examined them closely; the skin was broken and bloodied, and a bruise spread from her two middle knuckles. 

 

She found that she didn’t mind. She rather enjoyed the reminder of wiping the laughter off of Gordon’s face.

 

But… where would she go now? They had undoubtedly called foster services already to tell them that she was being ejected from their home. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t charge her for assault. She had no job and couldn’t afford an apartment on her own. She had no friends on Earth and her family --

 

_ Blood pooling around their heads, her father struggling, her sister screaming --  _

 

Just the thought of them made her feel empty, hollow. She had been a person, once, loved by her parents and siblings. A citizen of Mindoir, not a tourist of Earth. Now she was a hollow shell of a being, no different from a VI, programmed to be a functional being in a warped society that didn’t protect their own kind.

 

Tears sprung into her eyes, and she wished more than anything in that moment that she could be enough to make a difference. She, a small, weak woman, with poor eyesight, too much hair, few skills beyond farming and little knowledge beyond what she had absorbed from her books. She would amount to nothing but a cashier at a coffee house, or a burger flipper, or --

 

_ One person can change the galaxy, pumpkin. _

 

A chill racked her spine at her father’s words, spoken to her in the distant past. She had only been sixteen but already she was drowning in datapads offered by the school, preaching each career as the best for her as they pressed upon her to “do something with her brain”.

 

As she groaned and dropped her head onto the table, her father had come up behind her, pressing a warm, reassuring hand to the back of her neck.

 

“What do  _ you  _ want to do, pumpkin?” 

 

Her response had been muffled. “Read. Farm. Chase chickens, I don’t know.” 

 

Father had chucked. “What do you want to  _ be _ , then?”

 

She had paused then, asking herself that same question over and over. “I want to…” She had lifted her head off the table, her hair even more wild than usual, her glasses askew, “Be someone who changes things. Who makes sure poor people like us are taken care of, and saves people. But, doesn’t everyone want that?”

 

“Not everyone.”

 

“It’s a silly idea.” She had shuffled the datapads, picking another random one up for a planetary liaison position. 

 

“It’s not.” Father had stood, pressing a kiss to her hair. “You can be anyone, or anything, that you want to be if you put your mind to it. And know that one person can change the galaxy, pumpkin.”

 

Brought back to the present, Mia clenched her bleeding hand, gritting her teeth to stave off further tears.

 

She knew where she had to go.

 

Where her father would have _ wanted _ her to go. 

 

Slipping her gloves over delicate fingers, she hoisted the helmet over her curls.

 

And into her helmet’s GPS, she searched for the nearest Alliance headquarters.


	6. F is for Fleeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started as fluffy in my head, and turned a little NSFW.

She was drunk on him; his scent, his taste, his smile, his laughter. 

 

She was also perhaps, quite possibly, just a little actually drunk. But that didn’t change her addiction to Thane. It just… made certain matters more pressing. Like the need to feel his skin beneath her fingertips, to taste his --

 

“Shepard?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You’re externalizing your inner monologue.”

 

Her hand clapped over her mouth, her cheeks, already pink with drink, flushing crimson with embarrassment. “I am?”

 

He chuckled, low in his throat, a sound that remained arousing in spite of her embarrassment. “Yes. I am not complaining -- on the contrary, I enjoy it -- but we are rather public right now.”

 

“This is why I never drink,” Mia muttered, a frown plastered on her face, pushing her drink away in shame. “I make an ass of myself.” Tears pricked in the corners of her eyes, and she felt even more ashamed, if that was possible. Why in the galaxy was she crying? Was she really that drunk?

 

A gentle hand rested beneath her chin and tilted it upwards; her eyes locked with Thane’s. In them she saw not shame, but hunger. Without leaving her gaze, he pushed her drink back towards her. 

 

Her breath caught when he leaned in towards her, his hand faintly trailing down her neck before resting on her collarbone, his lips brushing against her ear when he purred, “Or we could continue drinking somewhere less public.”

 

A powerful shiver racked up her spine and her eyes fluttered closed. “I…” her words caught in her throat when his hand trailed downwards, brushing against the swell of her breast before settling on her waist. “I think that’s an acceptable compromise.”

 

A quick command into his omni-tool to pay their bill and they were on their way back to the  _ Normandy _ , the Citadel’s night air warm and humid on Shepard’s skin. The only sounds that permeated the silence were their rapid breathing and the pulse of bass tones emitting from a nearby nightclub. 

 

Eagerness made Shepard’s skin feel tight, each accidental brush of Thane’s hand against hers sending a rush of adrenaline through her bones. Their gazes locked and Thane looked like a man who had been trapped without food for weeks, not only hungry but  _ starving _ , starving for  _ her _ . 

 

“Thane…” she whispered, her voice rising at the end to turn his name into a question, and his lips were covering hers, cool and soft but not gentle, no, this kiss was hard and filled with need bordering on desperation. Every nerve in her body was alight, flames erupting in her core when his hand traced down her spine, firmly grasping what it found at the bottom. 

 

Before she could voice a word of concern, or even think, without breaking their embrace he guided her into an empty alley behind them. Never before had he kissed her like this: gone were the gentle kisses that he placed on her lips like a signature after heated kisses, gone was the patient curiosity that preceded their lovemaking. He needed her, and he needed her  _ now _ .

 

Fuck the fact that they were out in public and anyone -- including C-Sec -- could turn a corner and catch them. Fuck the fact that the ship was a five minute walk away. None of that mattered now. 

 

All that mattered was Thane.

 

She succumbed completely to the sensations, allowing her body’s reactions to take over her mind. She focused on the cold wall at her back; the warmth of his body pressed against hers, his hardness resting against her belly; his hands and tongue as hungry as his heart; the taste of his lips, salty and cool; the strength of his scent, like a forest just after the rain. 

 

Broad hands dug into her hips as his tongue lavished her neck, tasting her, breathing her in. Her chin rose and she gasped for air, her hips twitching in desire.

 

“Thane…” she breathed, all patience tossed out the window. “Please.”

 

That singular word shattered him. Their gazes met, and he was aflame. His nails dug into her hips as he wrenched her drawers down, exposing her bare flesh to the air. She dug her fingertips into the flesh at his shoulders, her core pulsing with impatience and need, and a surprised giggle of anticipation escaped her lips. He too pulled down his drawers, lifting her leg and wrapping it securely around his hip, and oh --  _ oh  _ \-- he pressed against her opening, already moist with desire and the rush of the act they were about to commit.

 

“Fuck…” she almost let out an unrestrained cry of pleasure as he drove into her, filling her to the brim, but he silenced her by covering her mouth with his. She whimpered as they began to rock together, her neck flushed, her hair wild as it began to fall out of its knot. One of Thane’s hands held her leg in place and the other wrapped around her neck, holding her firmly in place while he fucked her.

 

Never had she dreamed of an act such as this; yet at the same time, never had she been more turned on in her life. But in that moment, nothing could have felt more  _ right _ . Perhaps it was because their time together was fleeting, a fact which always followed them like a dark cloud, and they needed to make the most of every single moment. Perhaps it was because she was more in love than she had been in her thirty-two years. 

 

She loved him, oh, she loved him. She had never voiced it, but she knew. And she wanted him to fill her, fill up the parts of her that had become empty and hollow from too many years of loss, and as she dug her nails into him and whimpered his name over and over like a prayer he  _ did,  _ sinking his teeth into her to sustain his own cry. She trembled like a leaf battered by the storm, her breath coming in rapid gasps as she came down from the moment.

 

With Thane’s breath hot on her shoulder, she began to laugh, a deep, rolling laugh; within a moment he added to her laughter with his own low chuckle. 

 

As their laughter faded, he pulled back and their gazes locked. 

 

A time would come when Shepard would no longer be granted this happiness with him; every moment was fleeting. To lose him was inevitable, and there never would be a right time. Yet she had to lose him, she had to let go. The hollowness within her that he filled would empty once more.

 

But she could not let that change the here, the now. 

 

He nuzzled into the palm she rested on his cheek.

 

“Thank you,” she muttered.

 

“For what?” he asked.

 

“For everything.”   
  



End file.
